Rotator Cuff Exercises – What You Need to Know

Posted May 03 2013 8:20am

Probably the greatest achievement of a baseball pitcher is to throw a no-hitter. Watching an old flick recently, starring Kevin Costner and Kelly Preston and titled 'For the Love of the Game' was how I came to know how prestigious (and rare) this can be in the game of baseball.

However, it also reminds me of a reference made to a baseball player named Dock Ellis (it might not be news to most baseball fans!) who threw a no-hitter on LSD.

If you've taken LSD at least once in your life, you'd know how difficult it is to function normally, let alone pitch for the Pittburgh Pirates – a team that was in its prime in the seventies.

In fact, he went on to reveal, many years later, that he never pitched a game when he was sober. While that's unthinkable in today's game of baseball, what he, like most pitchers, also struggled with elbow and shoulder pain that comes from repetitive arm activities – in this case, pitching.

A condition that can be healed with exercise therapy such as rotator cuff exercises … but before we look at these exercise, let's understand a few things about this group of muscles and tendons as well as a rotator cuff injury .

Rotator Cuff – An Introduction

Simply put, the rotator cuff is located in the shoulder and consists of a combination of four muscles and tendons known as the Subscapularis, Teres Minor, Infraspinatus and Supraspinatus.

If these muscles are in perfect condition, you can rotate your arms with ease, much like a baseball pitcher as well as a bowler in the game of cricket.

It goes without saying that being careful with your rotator cuff muscles are important especially since you can injure them through overuse or by carrying out any eccentric movements that these muscles aren't used to performing. In most cases, it's the Infraspinatus and the Supraspinatus muscles that are injured due to these reasons. This can be terrible for athletes especially since it takes them away from the game they love so much while having to deal with excruciating pain that comes with such a disorder.

With that said, you might think that this only takes place with athletes but that's not true – a rotator cuff injury is also a common problem even with senior citizens.

Yet the solution is one and the same: exercise therapy while going easy on your rotator cuff muscles for a while so as to strengthen these muscles and get back into shape.

How to get Stronger Rotator Cuff Muscles

In other words, what you will have to do is build stronger rotator cuff muscles by working on a set of exercises designed to heal the tendons or muscles that might have been irritated or injured due to abuse or overuse.

So, here is a link where a doctor explains what a shoulder injury entails while also offering three exercises that can facilitate the healing process. Also, here is another link to a video that athletes that can take a look at, with the objective of strengthening their shoulder muscles.

In Closing

Are there any other rotator cuff exercises that you can think off? Please feel free to share them in the comments section below.